Επτά Επί Θήβας

The oldest surviving tragedy about the curse of Oedipus, "Seven Against Thebes" dramatizes the inevitable collision between two brothers bound by blood and doomed by their father's legacy. Eteocles rules Thebes; Polynices returns with an Argive army to reclaim the throne. As seven champions wage war on each side of the city's gates, the women of Thebes watch and pray, their chorus a haunting counterpoint to the masculine logic of war. Aeschylus builds unbearable tension through messenger speeches that name each attacking champion, each gateway's defender, until the final, unspeakable act: the brothers meet in single combat and kill each other. The play asks what remains when family becomes enemy, when duty to the city trumps all else, when the gods are silent or indifferent. Written in 467 BC, it was performed for an audience still reeling from the Persian invasion, and they would have heard in Thebes' siege an echo of their own recent terror. What survives is only the third part of a trilogy; the first two plays are lost. That such fragments can still devastate is proof of Aeschylus' power.